Organisations have eagerly adopted the new opportunities provided by distributed computing technology. These opportunities have also created new dependency on the technology and threats of technical problems. Information technology (IT) management has to choose its position towards these new technical risks. Should the problems be prevented proactively in advance or settled reactively afterwards?This paper draws conclusions from an action research case study aimed at proactive versus reactive end-user support. Between 1994 and 1997 one of the business units in Nokia Telecommunications (...) required a new approach for its distributed information systems (IS) to facilitate rapid organisational growth. The distributed IS and its end-user support were established and organised during a 30-month re-engineering process.These results provide a new view to the dependencies between business processes and IT. The new distributed IT has become, often insidiously, a necessity for vital business processes. Therefore, risk management should be adopted as a standard tool for IS management to identify such dependencies. Proactive actions should be aimed at those areas where IT-related business risks are identified. Proactivity should be supplemented by reactive support to provide daily assistance for the end-users. (shrink)

This chapter explores how to understand the contributions of experience, especially with respect to the role of cognitive science, in developing and assessing metaphysical theories of reality. Further, it develops a methodological basis for the idea that, independently of work in experimental philosophy focused on explications of concepts, contemporary metaphysical theories with a role for experiential evidence can be fruitfully connected to empirical work in psychology, especially cognitive science. While there are different ways to flesh out the connection between cognitive (...) science and metaphysics, one way to understand the methodological issue concerns the evaluation of Moorean facts about the manifest. The chapter deals with Moorean facts about experience, in particular, with features of the manifest image that are drawn from ordinary experience. It also explores how temporal experience relates to the nature of time. (shrink)

Tässä artikkelissa käsittelen Descartesin ikuisten totuuksien välttämättömyyteen liittyvää ongelmaa. Teoksessa Mietiskelyjä ensimmäisestä filosofiasta (1641–1642) Descartes nostaa esiin käsitteen ikuisista totuuksista, käyttäen esimerkkinään kolmiota. Kolmion muuttumattomaan ja ikuiseen luontoon kuuluu esimerkiksi, että sen kolme kulmaa ovat yhteenlaskettuna 180°. Se on totta kolmiosta, vaikka yhtään yksittäistä kolmiota ei olisi koskaan ollutkaan olemassa. Eräät ajattelemieni asioiden piirteet ovat siis Descartesin mukaan ajattelustani riippumattomia. Ikuisia totuuksia ovat ainakin matemaattiset ja geometriset tosiseikat sekä ristiriidan laki. Samoin Descartesin kuuluisa lause “ajattelen, siis olen” lukeutuu ikuisten totuuksien (...) joukkoon. Descartesin ikuiset totuudet olisivatkin siis loogisesti välttämättömiä. Niillä on kyseinen olemus riippumatta ulkoisten kohteiden olemassaolosta tai siitä, ajattelenko niitä lainkaan. Kuitenkin kirjeenvaihdossaan Descartes pitää itsepintaisesti kiinni käsityksestään, että ikuiset totuudet ovat Jumalan vapaasti luomia ja Jumala olisi voinut luoda ne erilailla. Näin ollen luodut ikuiset totuudet eivät tarkkaan ottaen olisikaan välttämättömiä vaan kontingentteja. Ne voisivat olla myös toisella tavalla. Artikkelin alkuun esittelen Descartesin modaalista metafysiikkaa sekä luotujen ikuisten totuuksien kontingenttiudesta seuraavia tulkinnallisia vaikeuksia. Tämän jälkeen pureudun kolmeen erilaiseen ratkaisuyritykseen kommentaarikirjallisuudessa (Frankfurt 1977; Curley 1984 & Bennett 1994) ja osoitan, miksi ne eivät riitä vastaamaan ongelmaan. Lopussa vedän johtopäätöksiä ja luonnostelen mahdollisen ratkaisun. (shrink)

How should we make choices when we know so little about our futures? L. A. Paul argues that we must view life decisions as choices to make discoveries about the nature of experience. Her account of transformative experience holds that part of the value of living authentically is to experience our lives and preferences in whatever ways they evolve.

sirAccording to the Swedish Immigration Board , about 26,500 people per year have applied for asylum in Sweden during the last decade. Experiences from Denmark show that up to 20% of those who seek asylum have been subjected to torture or severe ill-treatment in their home countries.1 Since 1992, most of these applicants have been examined at the Centre for Torture and Trauma survivors in Stockholm.2 The findings are described in medicolegal certificates submitted to the immigration authorities.The present study was (...) primarily aimed at analysing the relationship between the medicolegal certificates and the chances of obtaining asylum in 52 randomly selected CTD cases from the years 1994-96. The medicolegal certificates were classified according to extent of compatibility between testimony …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:WisCon 46Laurie Fuller, Jenna N. Hanchey, and E. OrnelasExistence as Resistance, WisCon 46, May 26–29, 2023, Madison, Wisconsin, United StatesIn a world that seems structured to kill most of its occupants, there is a utopian impulse in the act of existence itself. WisCon 46 represented a prefigurative utopian impulse through centering continued marginalized existence as resistance.1 Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha calls “prefigurative politics” the “fancy term for the idea (...) of imagining and building the world we want to see now,” particularly in terms of access needs.2 The structure as well as the content of the convention itself created a space in which to set the groundwork for utopia: the ways that we live and act to resist structures of oppression in order to prefigure a better world.Since WisCon’s founding in 1977, its intended audience has been fans, authors, and academics interested in the intersection between feminism and “science fiction, fantasy, and speculative literature of all sorts.”3 While neither feminism nor speculative fiction could be solely defined as utopian, both do explore utopian impulses that inspire change for the better. Therein lies the hope of Alessa Johns’s proposal that “the utopian imagination has been crucial for feminists.”4 Lisa Yaszek agrees: “for nearly 200 years writers have used speculative fiction consciously and collectively to dramatize the political issues most central to women living in a technocultural world and to create a sense of wonder about the interrelated possibilities of social and scientific change.”5 Envisioning a liberatory world is a feminist imperative, and speculative fiction offers a unique venue to do so. This imperative informed WisCon this year, as participants collectively worked to imagine and enact a better future for marginalized folks, in and beyond the space of the conference. [End Page 618]Enabling Existence through Con StructuresWisCon is unique in attuning its organizational structure to the creation of liberatory futures in the here and now. WisCon is strongly attentive to disability access of all kinds, COVID safety, antiracist/anti-oppression principles, and safety and anti-abuse support for all these areas. In the contemporary US context—where COVID-19 remains a major barrier to disabled people wishing to participate in conventions, where racist violence continues to threaten BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) life, where queer and trans folks are under exacerbated legal attacks—creating a convention space that protects and enables marginalized participation becomes a means of prefiguring utopian potential through embodied praxis. As mask, capacity, and vaccination mandates disappear (despite these ongoing pandemic times), and as bigotry of all forms continues relatively unabated, WisCon 46 remains steadfast in its commitment to safety. In short, the conference itself aims to become a utopian space.WisCon organizers are also keenly aware of the challenges that many different bodyminds might encounter in large group settings.6 Trained monitors oversee in-person and online programming in an effort to discourage harmful words and actions as well as ensure the fullest participation for those most impacted. Hence, disability justice lies at the center of the Con’s policies and practices. The event is made as accessible as possible through careful attention to venue selection, including the availability of gender-neutral bathrooms, scent-free spaces, and quiet rooms, as well as the use of color communication badges.This year’s event followed strict masking and testing protocols: individually packaged rapid COVID-19 tests were available without cost at registration, as were KN95 masks. The Con kept an anonymized record of self-reported positive COVID-19 tests, in case of possible exposure. This mutual responsibility reflects the kind of utopianism inherent to disability politics; that is, disability “allows for reformulation of in/dependence and community,” a way of rethinking how we share space and produce knowledge together.7The conference’s decidedly feminist approach “to creating a space for feminism and its consideration within the science fiction community” is applied at every level. The Con’s general organization and procedures are structured as nonhierarchically as possible. There is a board of directors as well as co-chairs, but these are rotating positions. This “commitment to feminism” is [End Page 619] reflected... (shrink)

I argue for a property mereology and for mereological bundle theory. I then apply this theory to the one over many problem (universals) and puzzles concerning persistence and material constitution.

This essay engages the work of Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero and her concept of the narratable self. Her relational humanism, rooted in our exposure to others, offers an ontology of uniqueness whose critique of abstraction, masculinism, and identity politics still resonates today where the meaning of a unique “you” is negotiated in embodied exchanges that may offer care or wounds. Cavarero develops an altruistic ethics that cultivates this humanism. I argue that her work should be extended to better capture (...) the political purchase of the narratable self that interacts dynamically and often ambiguously with the “we” of collective politics. Putting her work into conversation with the nineteenth‐century abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth, I suggest that Cavarero's work illuminates Truth as a philosopher of the narratable self. Moreover, Truth's work extends Cavarero's concerns with exposure that may do violence or offer care by making explicit the challenges of narration in the context of inequality, especially in terms of race and class. Exposure as an ontological and phenomenological condition then needs to take account of a broader publicity of textual, individual, and collective exposure to others to develop the critical, ethical, and political purchase it offers. (shrink)

This article represents an attempt to organize, critique, and extend research findings on gender differences in business ethics. The focus is on two dependent variables—ethical judgment and behavioral intent. Differences in findings between student and professional groups are noted and theoretical implications are discussed. The new research provided for this article contains two benchmark studies undertaken with identical stimuli and identical measures. These studies were followed by two additional studies, using the same measures but different stimuli, as a partial replication (...) and extension of the first two. Findings suggest that little difference exists between the genders on behavioral intent for professional groups and only minimal differences for the ethical judgment measures. Student results, however, produced more substantial differences for behavioral intention. (shrink)

The first ever interdisciplinary handbook in the field, this vital resource offers wide-ranging analysis of health research regulation. The chapters confront gaps between documented law and research in practice, and draw on legal, ethical and social theories about what counts as robust research regulation to make recommendations for future directions. The handbook provides an account and analysis of current regulatory tools - such as consent to participation in research and the anonymisation of data to protection participants' privacy - as well (...) as commentary on the roles of the actors and stakeholders who are involved in human health research and its regulation. Drawing on a range of international examples of research using patient data, tissue and other human materials, the collective contribution of the volume is to explore current challenges in delivering good medical research for the public good and to provide insights on how to design better regulatory approaches. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

This book develops a grammatical method for our underlying presuppositions which can help us unravel the problem of evil. The problem essentially rests on a dualism between fact and meaning. 'Evil and Intelligibility' provides an examination of the grammar of being and of the intelligibility of the world, culminating in a philosophical grammar in which God, meaning, and evil can coexist.

Improve yourself – and your workplace – with GRIT Leading With GRIT is a practical and proven guide for transforming the workplace, offering pragmatic insight on value-based strategies that improve the individual and the business. Based on the author's proprietary principles of GRIT – Generosity, Respect, Integrity, and Truth – this book describes how working toward individual improvement produces better organizational results than traditional approaches that focus on collective improvement. Readers are introduced to GRIT with a framework that can be (...) applied in any workplace scenario, and are provided with strategies for applying GRIT to communication and intra-office operations. Each chapter includes activities that assist with implementation, moving beyond the theoretical framework commonly taught in business school to provide a more practical approach to personal development. The principles of GRIT are exactly the sort of instruction leaders are encouraging, and companies worldwide are willing to invest large sums. The approach stands out for its unique, personal approach that melds values-based principles with business concepts to produce spectacular results. This book is the complete guide to GRIT, with an emphasis on practicality. Learn why the principles of GRIT have proven so effective Apply GRIT in communications for better productivity Discover how each person impacts those around them Cultivate a positive, constructive attitude for less stress and more growth GRIT helps readers make themselves and their workplaces happier and healthier, decreasing stress, sparking personal growth, retaining employees, and developing mindful leaders. In essence, Leading With GRIT is a handbook for improving the bottom line by improving the lives and outlook of those who contribute to it. (shrink)

Figuring prominently in their decisions regarding which theories to pursue are scientists' appeals to the promise or lack of promise of those theories. Yet philosophy of science has had little to say about how one is to assess theory promise. This essay identifies several indices that might be consulted to determine whether or not a theory is promising and worthy of pursuit. Various historical examples of appeals to such indices are introduced.

Drawing on diverse historical cases, this paper describes and examines various aspects of a modality of scientific appraisal which has remained largely unexplored, theory pursuit. Specifically, it addresses the following issues: the epistemic and pragmatic commitments involved in theory pursuit, including how these differ from those characteristic of theory acceptance; how the research interests of scientists enter into their pursuit decisions; some of the strategies for the refinement and extension of a theory's empirical abilities which typify theory pursuit; and the (...) need to distinguish between individual and community rationality in contexts of pursuit. (shrink)

Recent research in Baroque Scholastic and early modern meditational exercises has demonstrated similarity between Descartes’s Meditations and St. Teresa of Ávila’s El Castillo Interior. While there is growing agreement on the influence of Catholic meditations on Descartes, the extent of Teresa’s role is debated. Instead of discussing the full extent of Teresa’s influence, this paper concentrates on one example of the considered influence: the skeptical scenario of demonic deception, having clear anticipation in Teresa’s work where the exercitant faces off against (...) deceiving demonic forces, which confound and temporarily halt the meditative progress. The paper analyzes Teresa’s use of deceptive demons and its influence on the Cartesian Evil Demon scenario, while contrasting both with a discussion of demonic deception in the late Medieval and Baroque Scholastic context, arguing that demonological discussions in 1500s allowed both Teresa’s and Descartes’s deceivers to not only cause diversions but to make the deception laborious to resist. (shrink)

I offer a novel reading in this dissertation of René Descartes’s (1596–1650) skepticism in his work Meditations on First Philosophy (1641–1642). I specifically aim to answer the following problem: How is Descartes’s skepticism to be read in accordance with the rest of his philosophy? This problem can be divided into two more general questions in Descartes scholarship: How is skepticism utilized in the Meditations, and what are its intentions and relation to the preceding philosophical tradition? -/- I approach the topic (...) from both a historical and a text-based analysis, combining textual and contextual research. I examine Descartes’s skepticism against two main traditions in the historical analysis: philosophical skepticism and Aristotelian Scholasticism. I argue that skepticism in the Meditations is intended to oppose and upheave both Scholasticism and skepticism. The intended results of the work are not merely epistemological but also metaphysical and even ethical. Furthermore, these ambitions cannot be neatly distinguished but merge into each other. -/- The third historical context against which the skeptical meditations are examined is the literary genre of meditative exercises, particularly from the 1500–1600’s, which, while religiously and spiritually oriented, likewise provided the practitioner with an enlightened understanding of self-knowledge and their cognitive place in the world on the way to closer spiritual proximity to God. I argue by this reading that the skepticism of the Meditations is an attentive, meditational cognitive exercise that is not merely instrumental and methodological but is to have a genuine and serious (psychologically real) effect on our thinking. The skeptical meditation is not simply a theoretical thought experiment but is to be seriously practiced as a transformative process of reorienting one’s cognitive framework to discover truth, certainty, and a way to a happy, tranquil, and virtuous life. -/- I offer a close reading in the textual analysis of the first three meditations of the Meditations. I argue that the meditative skepticism employed in the work does not reject the previous beliefs but suspends judgment on them, withdrawing assent until further evidence can be found. I introduce a new term into Descartes scholarship in this analysis, based on the terminology of ancient skepticism: Cartesian epochē (gr. epochē, suspension, withdrawal). Instead of rejecting previous beliefs or assenting to the probably false, the skeptical procedure of the Meditations is argued to emulate in important ways the suspension of judgment on equally balanced reasons in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism. Novel interpretations are presented along the way of the will’s freedom, of the First Meditation’s skeptical scenarios, of the cogito, and of the vindication of metaphysical certainty, as well as a clarification of the Cartesian Circle problem. -/- Reinterpreting the relation of Descartes’s skepticism to the preceding historical and literary traditions leads to a new look at the skeptical method itself. Presenting a new interpretation of skepticism in the Meditations leads at the same time to a new look at its relation to the historical context. The two research questions are, then, intrinsically tied together. -/- My focus in the study is on the Meditations, but I also reference and discuss Descartes’s other philosophical works, as well as his correspondence, when necessary. (shrink)

This article explores and compares cross-gender interactions of first and third graders in one child care center. Three prevalent forms of interaction are discussed: teasing, disputing, and playing. The author argues that these three forms of interaction are related to the use of space: Teasing often occurs when space is constricted, disputing is often the result of invaded space, and playing requires shared space and varying levels of cooperation. By focusing on the relationship between space and interaction, important power asymmetries (...) appear. Since boys are more likely to initiate invasions and more likely to determine the rules and terms of the play, they maintain a greater amount of power and control. (shrink)

Examines acts of showing--from dog shows to striptease--to understand and theorize instances of heightened performance in everyday life as well as on the stage.

This is a book about writing and thinking about bioethics of a particular sort, a feminism of a particular sort, and a Jewish philosophy of a particular sort. It is about all of these things-feminist thought, Judaism, and the practice of bioethics-as I have written about them in a distinctive moment in the field and from the moral location from which I worked, which was as an academic in the disciplines of Jewish Studies and moral philosophy who also worked as (...) a clinical ethicist in a large public hospital. These are cases of children and families facing illness and death within the clinical world, a world of scarcity, desperation, and grace, and the choices they make within that world. It explores the meaning of these choices and reflects on why the dilemmas are so important in our society. The book considers the moral gesture that is medicine and the role of the ethicist as she comes to learn her practice. This is a book about the memory and meaning, re-evaluated and considered in light of the traditional texts of Jewish thought. (shrink)

The term ‘phenomenology’ has become almost as over-used and emptied of meaning as that other word from Continental Philosophy, namely ‘existentialism’. Yet Husserl, who first put forward the phenomenological method, considered it a rigorous alternative to positivism, and in the hands of Merleau-Ponty, a disciple of Husserl in France, phenomenology became a way of gaining a disciplined and coherent perspective on the world in which we live. When this study originally published in 1977 there were only a few books in (...) English on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. It introduced the reader and suggested how his thought might throw light on some of the assumptions and presuppositions of certain contemporary forms of Anglo-Saxon philosophy and social science. It also demonstrates how phenomenology seeks to unite philosophy and social science, rather than define them as mutually exclusive domains of knowledge. (shrink)

Graeme Laurie stepped down from the Chair in Medical Jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh in 2019. This edited collection pays tribute to his extraordinary contributions to the field. Graeme has often spoken about the importance of 'legacy' in academic work and has forged a remarkable intellectual legacy of his own, notably through his work on genetic privacy, human tissue and information governance, and on the regulatory salience of the concept of liminality. The essays in this volume animate the concept (...) of legacy as lens of analysis for the study and practice of medical jurisprudence. In this light, legacy reveals characteristics of both benefit and burden, as both an encumbrance to and facilitator of the development of law, policy and regulation. Overall, the contributions reconcile the ideas of legacy and responsiveness and show that both dimensions are critical to achieve and sustain the health of medical jurisprudence itself as a dynamic, interdisciplinary and policy-engaged field of thinking. (shrink)

In this paper, I join the so-called voluntarism debate on Descartes’s theory of will and judgment, arguing for an indirect doxastic voluntarism reading of Descartes, as opposed to a classic, or direct doxastic voluntarism. More specifically, I examine the question whether Descartes thinks the will can have a direct and full control over one’s suspension of judgment. Descartes was a doxastic voluntarist, maintaining that the will has some kind of control over one’s doxastic states, such as belief and doubt. According (...) to a long-held reading, the control that the will has over doxastic states in Descartes’s theory is direct; the doxastic states are affected by the mere act of will. This reading is called direct doxastic voluntarism (DDV), or direct voluntarism (DV) for short, and it states that we are capable of assenting, rejecting and suspending a judgment based only on our will to do so. Thus, these actions would be utterly and merely volitional. DV can be divided into two further positions, direct positive voluntarism (+DV) and direct negative voluntarism (-DV). Direct positive voluntarism deals with the act of forming judgments, maintaining that one can accept or deny a proposition wilfully and either merely believe or not believe something voluntarily. Direct negative voluntarism deals with the suspension of judgment, maintaining that it can likewise be accomplished by a simple act of will. However, I support an alternate account of Descartes’s voluntarism, which is called indirect doxastic voluntarism (IDV), or indirect voluntarism (IV) for short. By this account, the will is capable of affecting a doxastic state indirectly by making one concentrate on essential tasks for forming that state, such as gathering up and paying attention to strong reasons and evidence. IV is also possible to divide into indirect positive voluntarism (+IV) and indirect negative voluntarism (-IV). Per indirect positive voluntarism the will needs to pay attention to reasons for accepting or denying some proposition. Likewise, by indirect negative voluntarism, in order to suspend judgment the will needs to direct this attention to the reasons for doubt. By attending to these reasons, the will also comes face-to-face with its own freedom. This feeling of freedom can be described as affectivity of the reasons for belief (assent) and doubt (suspension). (shrink)